Didn't arrive today

Here's hoping its tomorrow.

I didn't really get into the whole Scottish thing with St. Mirren in the end. I find it a better challenge trying to get then through the Enlgsih leagues. So I have started a new game with us in the Conference North. The rewards of success are greater down in England with a larger amount of money awaiting you in the Premiership and at least 10-15 seasons to build the club into genuine challengers. This is always my favourite long term game.

OK I've just started and already, the calibre of free transfer willing to signing is greater. Karembeu and Mostovoi are interested. I'm going to try and go with youth. I'll have to get up the leagues quick style, without money, or I'll see my £2m bank loan spiral out of control and I'll probably get the bullet.

Also. I suggest everyone gives this Skin a bash. It makes the game even better than it is believe it or not. Takes a bit of getting used to but it is far more professional looking than the standard skins. Whoever made it deserves a pat on the back.

Skin

Cool site

Also has new 2d match graphics, logos, kits and some nifty sounding utilitites. Think I'll be downloading tonight

Managed to get a couple of games in last night. Drew 1 - 1 with Dundee Utd, lost to Celtic 0 - 2 and threw away a precious three points in the last minute against Dundee by drawing 2 - 2. They have Malcom Christie and Andy Cole up front! For some reason, one of my youth players Chris Finnigan headed the ball from the halfway line back to my keeper where a Dundee sub picked it up and rattled it past Mark Brown

Jst picked up my second win of the season, beating Aberdeen 3-0 at Pittodrie. The switch to a 4-3-3 seems to be paying off

Finished my first season in a respectable 3rd place. Eddie Malone won player of the year and I had 4 players in the team of the year. I also managed to blood some youngsters at the tail end of the season. My U19's and Reserves won both their leagues

Chris Finnigan! On one of my CM03/04 games he went to Juventus and played in the UEFA Cup final.

Back on topic, FM still hasn't arrived

Hopefully it'll be here when I wake up tomorrow. Do Play.com use Royal Mail, or some Parcel service?

Royal mail.

I order mine from them on Thursday arrived in the post Monday morning

Add your name to the list if you want a game Scot first div

1. FCUK the ton (St.Mirren)

Once l get ten l will start the game

Came this morning

My shit heap of a computer ran out of Disk Space, i'm frantically uninstalling shit!

Is this going or what? Is it too late to join? Are there any free teams?

So far in my game, fuckall has happened. I started unemployed and so i've taken a months holiday hoping some managers will be under-pressure when I return.

That is a different game l am starting one with division one teams only and l am st mirren so if you want to play there is only nine more spaces add your name to the list

Will do, unless MarreZ still has spaces.

I ordered FM2006 from Tesco.com on Tuesday afternoon, it arrived yesterday.

P & B house will have internet access soon so I would be up from Network banter.

I'm up for some network shenanigans. MarreZ, if you're still setting up a game, give me a shout.

I've just started my 1st game as Falkirk.

Not even finished pre-season and Craig Ireland, Kenny Milne and Steven Thomson have all pulled up with serious injuries.

Got bored with FM05 towards the end - is FM06 a major improvement??

Gold demo was unavailable from SI site so playing the Beta demo as Bolton. Didnt score in our first 5 friendlies playing my favoured 4-3-1-2. Switched to 4-4-2 which was marginally better and now getting some joy with 4-1-4-1 altho we do seem to draw all our games. Bring back Allardyce!!

Got a day off work 2m so might go out and get it. Is it priced pretty much the same everywhere or are some shops more expensive/cheaper than others??

it is still happening to me in the full game.

Just started my first game with Nott'm Forest and I like it, I like it a lot.

Played 4 League games, 2 Draws at home and 2 wins Away, it seems teams are coming to the City Ground and sitting in for a point. Gareth Taylor is a right touch, 8 goals in 3 games including a 13 minute hat-trick v Lincoln in the League cup.

Plenty of improving still to be done to the team and squad though, De Pedro on a free and El Hamdouni on loan from Spurs the only captures so far. Will possibly bring in another permanent player and 2 short term loans to keep me ticking over till January as the deadline is next week.

AWOOOOGA!

Relegation is certain for ICT. Still bottom of the league and approaching the end of Novemeber. Have finally won a game though with a good win over Dunfermline. Got turned over by Aberdeen and Falkirk so I am 4 points adrift at the bottom with a record worse than that of Partick Thistle. I don't know what has gone wrong with my team

Nothing is certain at that stage of the season, even in Football Manager. It took me almost a quarter of the season to get any points on the board, but I still stayed up thanks to a win away to Falkirk in my last match of the season, sending them down in the process

I found that going to a defensive 4-3-3 worked for a short spell, then switching to an attacking 4-4-2 got me 7 points from my last 3 games

I started with 4 - 4- 2 Counter then went for 4 - 1 - 3 - 2 and have now gone for a 4 - 1 - 3 -1 - 1 (I think). Times are getting desperate. I did pump Brechin 8 - 1 and then mauled Alloa 6 - 1 in the Cup and called Hendrie and tit!

see, i told you last year you would get relegated and you didnt believe me

Me and coddy tried multiplayer last weekend and it ran like Wayne Rooney through treacle. It might be worth waiting a few weeks, im getting 8mb broadband with 768kb upload put into my office, which i can leave running as a server only, that should be sufficiently faster, and people can jump in and out when they want then, rather than having to wait for someone all the time.

Thoughts on that?

I beleive that Dave is hoping to get 2 Meg BB set up soon - if he minds to order the right router

Sounds good to me.

But if its behind a firewall will it be able to host

yeh just have to open the ports

2mb is only 256mb up, thats what we were running the other day, it was brutal.

Bugger

I've been playing Network with one of my pals.

He's Dundee, and i'm the Saintees.

He beat me 7-0 in the First Round of the Challenge Cup, because I had bought Ludovic Roy, but he disspeared! So I had to play Stevie Woods, who I had ended up with through some Part Exchange deal.

Then, in the first league game, I beat Stranraer 6-0, with Scotland, Coyle and Deuchar all getting doubles.

F'cking crazy.

Is that the patched version as well?

Just started my second season. Finnbogason has went back to Celtic, tried to get him again but didn't want to come. I also sold Tom Brighton who was utter rubbish for me to Alloa for £7k. I got Alan Gow on loan from Falkirk for the season, and signed Sheffield Wednesday striker Lee Peacock on a free transfer. I'm also trying to get Shaun Fagan on loan from Motherwell as Paul McHale is out for 3 months. I started the campaign with a 2-0 extra time win against Brechin away in the Challenge Cup. First league game of the season went well with a 2-0 win over St Mirren

My team at the minute is

----------------------------Jarvie-----------------------------
---------Bouadji--------McKeown------Higgins-------------
-McGowan------------------------------------Bradley(Malone usually but out for 3 months)
--------O'Donnell-------Bryson--------McKeever(McHale usually but out with injury)
-------------Gow----------------Brawley-------------------

subs: Cherrie, McGregor, Williams, Masterton, Arbuckle

This game is awesome!

Gone St Mirren against my pals Dundee. Just about to start the season properly, but i've been VERY active in the transfer market.

I just sold McGinty to Gretna for 18k, and he's going to show them "real football" apparently

ross county paid me 120k for mcginty

What the hell's the deal with St Johnstone?

Over-rated, no Sheridan - the editor was quite clearly on the funny juice.

He wasn't kidding.

Scored a hat-trick on his debut.

Baldacinno played shit on his debut for me, I had to go to penalties to beat Brechin, even though they only had 1 shot on target whole game.

Got drawn in the 2nd round of the League Cup away to Falkirk. I had an injury crisis so called up Simon Donnelly, who was on a trial in the Reserves, to the bench. Losing 2-0 with half an hour to go, bring Donnelly on and he scores two and gets me to extra time. I hold out for penalties but lose 5-4

I think I have a bug in my game. I've had about 7 penalties in the 4 league games I've played!!

Sheridan is in the French version of the game!

He's in the reserves at the start though.

Yep, that's where he started in my game. Being perfectly honest, that's where he stayed

Just played my first game of the season with ICT and beat Dunfermline 2-1 after telling Leishman we would win easily. Sold Stuart McCaffrey to Hibs for £500k.

The Saintees have ran away with my Network game already - under the guidance of Duncan Shearer There was a bit of a mix up that involved me being in charge of St Johnstone, instead of St Mirren, for 1 game hour.

Anyway, as St Mirren, I just signed McBreen from Falkirk for 3k

Jason Scotland is the best player in the league by a long way, followed by Bingham, who plays for my pals team

Deuchar has been shit for me. I shouldn't of sold Kean, he seemed like someone who could score goals. Sutton can't score, neither can Deuchar, but at least Deuchar can set up some goals, occasionally.

Line-up:

-------------------------Hinchcliffe-------------------------

--Van Zanten------C. Innes-------Broadfoot------Reid--
----------------------------Milen----------------------------
---S Tosh-------------------------------R. Baldachinno---
---------------------------Adam----------------------------
------------K Deuchar----------------Mehmet-------------

Something like that anyway.

Just started my first game as the Buddies.

Playing 3-5-2 with Reid and DVZ as wing backs. No movement in the transfer market yet.

Anyone I can pick up cheap/free who will do a turn?

See if you can get Andrew Keogh from Motherwell.

Fecking hell, never agree to play the MK Dongs!!

Wait till I see the SI bods next time they are propping up the sponsors bar at AFCW!

Decent start winning 4-0 away to Queens on the first day of the season (why wasnt it Dundee away? )

So far McCay and Reid are amazing as the two wing-backs (poor DVZ) and there's no place for McGowne and Millen who are both decent in real life but seemingly not rated in the game.

Asked my assistant to filter out unrealistic targets for loan options and only a few came up so took Shaun Fagan for a season. Decided to chance my arm by unchecking the box and managed to get Finboggason from Celtic and Sam Morrow from Hibs although neither have been unable to get in front of Keano and Sutton so far

Cause it doesnt have the real fixture list

You can download the real fixture list, just follow the link posted in the skins thread and go to the other downloads

My season at Forest has gone tits up, looked good at the start but I now lie in mid table mediocrity, not good enough to go up and not too shite to go down. I used to be good at this Champ Man/Football Man malarky but oh how times have changed.

Gareth Taylor has been a shining light throughout though, the big Welshman will indeed get his contract renewed for next season. I need some of the over paud diddies around him to start doing something though.

My first 11 is something along the lines of

-----------------Gerrard---------------
Scimeca------Naybet--------Bunjevcevic------Keenan
-------Potter------Holt------Williams/Commons
------------------Litmanen/Belkevich----------
------------Taylor--------Thorne---------

Transfers In that I can remember.

Scimeca from West Brom(nominal)
Naybet/Bunjo from Spurs(both nominal fees)
Keenan from Chelsea(nominal)
Potter from Liverpool(loan)
Williams from West Ham(loan)
Litmanen on a free in the January window
Belkevich from Dynamo Kiev(110k, my biggest purchase to date)
Thorne from Norwich(loan)

Just sold Lappin to Gretna for 250K and DVZ to Hibs for the same amount

So got around 350K burning a hole in my pocket. Any suggestions of who might come to Love St in that price range??

Only about 5 days til transfer deadline so got to be quick!!